’20th Hijacker’ Seeks Transfer to Guantanamo

(CN) – The so-called “20th hijacker” in the Sept. 11 2001, terror attacks asked a federal judge in Miami to transfer him to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The request by Zacarias Moussaoui came in the form of an often-rambling, handwritten letter delivered to U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King on Wednesday. Moussaoui has been serving a life sentence at the federal prison in Florence, Colo., since he pleaded guilty in 2005 to conspiring with the 19 hijackers who carried out the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. In his letter, Moussaoui claims to have been assaulted by a gang member at the prison on November 22, and that the government has repeatedly denied him medical care — namely, a hernia operation — for which he was previously approved. He also claims the Obama administration and others “will stop at nothing” to deny him judicial review of his case and “access to a real lawyer.” In a second letter, Moussaoui says he has not had a lawyer since September 2011, and asks the court to appoint civil rights attorneys Benjamin Crump and Anthony Gray, counsel to the family of Michael Brown Jr., the unarmed black teen who’s shooting death by a white Ferguson police officer sparked a national debate on law enforcement in America, to represent him. The court said responses to these requests are due by Dec. 29, 2014.